


The lonely Genius

by mihawque (mona_liar)



Series: Heavy is the Head which bears all Knowledge [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Character Analysis, Character Study, Gen, POV First Person, Science, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25494439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mona_liar/pseuds/mihawque
Summary: It is a great honour to work for Dr. Vegapunk, no one can deny it. This does not change the fact that I do not want to be in his stead, for nothing in the world.
Series: Heavy is the Head which bears all Knowledge [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1854583
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6





	The lonely Genius

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, maybe you know me from tumblr as the annoying person rambling on about Vegapunk, the lack of scientific standard and how the monopolisation of education and research does more harm than good.  
> I'm currently supposed to be studying for exams but I first needed to get this out of my chest because people, I've realised that for all the stuff he's accomplished, Vegapunk must lead a pretty shitty life and being 500 years ahead of the rest of the world is a horrible thing to be. All of this started when I wrote "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PEER REVIEW IF YOUR NAME IS DOCTOR VEGAPUNK" and somehow unravelled into... this.  
> Yeah, I am physically incapable of writing anything uplifting. I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.
> 
> This is not edited, therefore not beta read, and yet I hope you can take something away from it. Leave a kudo and/or leave a comment if you liked it, even if it's not words but an emoji!

There is one thing all of us agree on: Dr. Vegapunk is the loneliest person we know.

I have been working for him for slightly over a year now. I was added to his genetics lab team shortly after the Paramount War. A lot of the people from the University got relocated to different research facilities around that time, and so I wasn’t surprised when my dissertation supervisor revealed this to me. Every person who has finished their degree at the University knows a dissertation is nothing but a way of stalling us until the World Government decides what to do with us, a bunch of students who have technically already finished their degrees but cannot be sent out into the field and now need to have an occupation on paper while they watch the date of their dissertation defence get pushed back again and again until they don’t even look at the letters informing them about the change of plans anymore.

When I first arrived at the lab, which is located on a secret island in the New World I still don’t know the name of, I was warmly welcomed by my colleagues. They quickly made me forget about the dreadful feeling of intimidation I felt when thinking about the implications and responsibility of working in such a prestigious establishment, with the greatest Scientist in the world. Although _working with_ is misleading. The first time I saw him in person was one month after I first stepped foot on the island when he came into the staff kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee. I distinctively remember the meeting, because it was three in the morning and the only reason why I was in the cafeteria at this hour was because I had wanted to make myself a herbal tea in the hope that it would help me sleep, which I had failed to do so far. He prepared his coffee in silence and while the dark beverage was slowly filled into a cup he starred at me through his thick, round, rimless glasses.

“You’re new,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. I nodded, my mouth was still filled with hot tea which was burning my tongue. 

“Are you from the University?”

“Yes.”

“Mh. I should know better than to expect more.”

And then he took his cup of coffee and left without saying another word.

Everyone thinks about Dr. Vegapunk as this really eccentric genius, and they’re certainly not wrong. He is a genius, no one can deny it, and he is a very peculiar person. When I told Viviane, one of my lab partners, about the nightly meeting, she said that meeting the Doctor in the kitchen in the middle of the night actually happens quite often. It’s true, when I went to the kitchen in the middle of the night, I met him again four or five times. The second time, he did not even look at me and kept his back turned to me the entire time. The third time, he asked me for my name and where I was from, which was unusual, because everyone at the University gets there the same way. We are lucky enough to be enrolled in school in Mary Geoise on a scholarship, and beginning age 6 at the earliest, boarding school is our home. When we’re 18, we take an exam and the best 500 students are accepted into the University for a course of their choosing. Dr. Vegapunk is quite old, he has white hair already, so maybe things used to be different in his time, but it still surprised me that he needed to ask. Nonetheless, I told him about it. His coffee was already finished by this point, and he was slowly drinking it, one small sip at a time.

“Do you remember your family, then? Do you keep in contact?”

“I sometimes write them, but we’re not close. I haven’t seen them since I left my home island.”

“Mh. Maybe that’s for the best.” Then he left.

It is strange working for Dr. Vegapunk. Sometimes, when we’re lucky, we get some insight into what his current project is, but most of the time, all we get to see is orders about some tests he wants us to run or people from the World Government or the Marines when they come to the island to see the result of our research or to drop off new requests.

On a regular basis, someone has to go deliver the test results to the Doctor. I’m still the newest addition to the lab, so most of the time I end up doing it. It’s a task no one likes to take, first of all because being in the same room as Dr. Vegapunk is always an unnerving experience and second of all because you always leave feeling more stupid than you did when you entered.

All my colleagues are great people and certainly pioneers in their respective fields. There isn’t a day where I don’t learn something new from them. And yet, they all pale to nothing next to Dr. Vegapunk. We say his work is 500 years ahead of us and we’re not lying. This is the best estimate we can make. For most of his projects, we can only make guesses what theoretical groundwork he is even working with because no one understands anything about what he’s doing. It’s like he lives in several additional dimensions we don’t have access to, or literally came from the future. When you enter his office, there is no possible way you can even have the slightest grasp of what he is doing.

The walls are all covered in blackboard, which are equally covered in detailed and small chalk writing. His desk is always drowning in great piles of paper with complicated blueprints and designs. You see all of it, see all his hypothesises, his ideas, his goals, and you don’t understand any of it. Every time, I feel as if I should be able to guess what he’s doing, what field he is working in at least, and every time I feel like a child starring at an encyclopaedia even though it has yet to learn how to read.

We are researchers, we have devoted our life to understanding the world around us and yet the very existence of Dr. Vegapunk is a constant and cruel reminder that all my work, no matter how dedicated I am or how many sleepless nights I work through, will never amount to anything significant and no one will be able to change that for the next 500 years.

The worst about all of this, however, is that Dr. Vegapunk has gotten the short end of the stick.

A few months ago, he made a break through. I don’t know what is was concerning, how long he had been working on it, but he stormed out of his office, chalk stick in one hand and a bundle of lose papers in the other and he shouted something none of us could understand but which sounded very happy. He thanked us all from the balcony of his office and went back inside. I met him in the kitchen two nights later and I asked about it. I have never seen him this excited. He began to explain something, clearly very enthusiastic about whatever he was talking about and I didn’t understand a single thing. I listened, intensely, trying to make out sentences, to make sense of the strings of words, to give them some sort of coherence together, but it was impossible. After several minutes, Dr. Vegapunk looked at me and let his hands, which he had used to frantically gesture in the empty air, fall at his sides.

“Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?”

I hesitated, but decided to be honest.

“No,” I said.

He looked devastated.

“That alright, he said, it’s not your fault. No one ever does.”

I think it’s worse when things do not go this smoothly. When he makes a break through or achieves something, he must get a certain sense of fulfilment which is very rewarding in and of itself, even if only for a short moment, even if he cannot share it with anyone because none of us understand what this break through is. But when he finds a fallacy in his theories or hits a dead end, that’s when things go south. He will barricade himself in his office and none of us will see him for days. I don’t think he eats when things get really bad. And when he leaves, he is angry, and screams at us which is why everyone gets out of his way when this happens. I had to bring him test results once while he was like this, and it was not a pretty sight. I found him crouched on his desk, all the papers strewn on the floor and he was talking to a teddy bear in front of him. This is not the weird part, I used to do this as well when I was still at the University and trying to work out a problem, thinking out loud by playing out a conversation with someone that wasn’t there to hear my own thoughts on the outside of my brain. But when I did this, it was because my classmates had their own work to go through or because they were sleeping but at the end of the day, during lunch break, or whenever we had some free time, I could talk to them about it and get their input, talk to real life people who understood what I was saying and I could hear ideas that were not my own.

I don’t think Dr. Vegapunk knows what it feels like to talk to other people about his work and share genuine enthusiasm with them. I don’t think it’s possible for this to happen to him.

He is the greatest scientist in the world, and he always delivers the results people demand of him; but at the end of the day, he is light years ahead of us, all by himself. If he could, I think he would give everything to make this distance between himself and another being just a fraction of an atom smaller.

It is a tragedy that even with his genius, this is the one problem he will never be able to solve.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this short One Shot and please leave a kudo and a comment if you did!  
> You can find me on tumblr @ [Mihawque](https://mihawque.tumblr.com/)! Feel free to come talk to me about One Piece or anything else that you can think about!


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